PLEA

A GIS-based methodology is discussed, which simplifies recording and analysis of post-occupancy changes in residential buildings. Each modification is considered as a unique record in a database, and has a string assigned to it in a multi-parametric matrix. Its position in the matrix is determined by functional relationships with other housing modifications, orientation, adjacent inner and outer spaces, building materials and physical size. The method was tested in three residential neighbourhoods in two towns in the Negev desert of Israel, with the intention of highlighting modifications related to the climatic performance of buildings, and developing a set of recommendations aimed at improving the design of new residential buildings.

The reciprocity between appearance, available technology and environmental context forms the subject matter of Rappaport’s famous ‘House Form and Culture’. In this essay the evolution of a particular seventeenth century building type – the English ‘hall-and-parlour’ house – in response to the significant environmental and cultural change experienced by the first English settlers in Massachusetts is examined in detail, with the aim of clarifying the impact of climatic conditions on individual buildings and larger settlement patterns. It demonstrates that transformations in the idea of what a house might look like, particularly in relation to its immediate surroundings, had wider repercussions for American ‘society’, and for energy expenditure on transport, in the longer term.

A new university campus in outback Australia is set to teach the world how to not only survive, but to sustain life in the future. Built to house the School of Environment and Information Sciences and the School of Business, the campus is also a centre for the study of environmental issues. Academic offices, a research institute, regional herbarium, specialist teaching facilities, lecture theatre complex and computer centre are occupied and residential accommodation will be complete in February 2000. Set on an open site, the campus comprising elements disciplined by deep green ethics, is articulated with rammed earth and recycled timber clearly expressing the University’s environmental mission. Water is one of this dry hot continent’s most precious resources. The award winning, stormwater recycling system, on-site greywater treatment and dry composting toilets obviate the need for connection to town sewerage or stormwater mains. Early decisions favouring passive techniques were critical in developing a building envelope responsive to temperature variations. The thermal mass of the concrete floors and rammed earth walls stores the sun’s heat in winter and keeps the building cool in winter. Low energy systems include night cooling, circulation of hot and cold water through the slab, waterfalls and spray mists, thermal chimneys. The Thurgoona Campus experience is on a neighbourhood scale and provides a live model that addresses some of the present and future issues of environmental impact and community cost.

The Oxford Photovoltaic House was built to help establish photovoltaics (PV) as a viable technology in the UK through the medium of a high profile demonstration project. To achieve this objective a 4kW peak PV array was built on a south facing roof of a new super-insulated low energy house in Oxford completed in April 1995. The demonstration project has provided an opportunity to test the barriers that exist to the wider use of the technology in the UK, to assess the performance of the roof in the UK weather and to evaluate the potential contribution of domestic photovoltaics to the energy supply in the UK. The findings to date of this project are described.